The rains are a time of rebirth. But there is a catch; rebirth is dyadic in nature. In order for something to be born, something else has to die. I guess that’s why so many people feel sad when it rains. The circle of life retains its balance through every season. For every child running in rapture through the rain with arms spread and his face turned to the sky, there’s an aged body with its back bent by the weight of the years, staring out of a solitary window desperate to hold on to fleeting glimpses of seasons gone by. Many times rain pours in the promise of hope but every once in a while, magic blooms within the falling drops and they incarnate as hope itself.
I love rain – almost always. Sometimes, and it’s a rare event, I get saddened by it though I don’t know why. Maybe rain drops pile up all of life’s regrets, maybe all the hopes of yesteryear that strayed away from manifesting. Its complicated. This particular sadness is not a bad thing in itself – only I don’t know what or why. It is without reason or rhyme, just a heavy load on the heart, nostalgia without a definite memory to back it up. All the years of my life seem to condense into a moment when the eyes see the fall of rain, the ears hear the patter of small drops and the nose smells the essence of life when the falling water binds with the soil outside.
And the mind starts wandering. It aspires, it plummets and it does it again and again senselessly. There is hope, there is regret and sometimes there’s hope in regret. Rebirth. There’s that word again. The mind traces the path of the rain drops back to the darkened sky. To the time when a raindrop forms, then it becomes a moment, suspended in time, a call to take up a lost cause once again in bravado inspired by age. A belief in the deception that with age a higher altitude of wisdom is implied. And an even greater fallacy that a new height guarantees a better chance of success this time around.
Its past midnight here as I write this and tomorrow the street outside will bear witness to its annual sins being washed away beyond my concrete horizon. Baptism of earth by the clouds. First by lightening, then by thunder and finally by water. Absolution and a fresh start. Much like the birth of a child, the rains reaffirm that God has not yet lost all hope for humanity. Another chance has been given, whether we deserve it or not. Its up to us to choose what to do with this new opportunity and set right our wrongs.
The rain is also about commitment. The unwritten sacred pact between all living things. Between all things past and all that is yet to come. The corporeal umbilical cord connecting the fabric of our being, nurturing our consciousness and tethering life together across time and space. Our little patch of immortality. From the tiniest sapling struggling to break ground to the largest mammoth devouring everything in its path, the rain shares its own life without favor or prejudice. It surrenders itself to whatever lays in its path and merges to form a totality greater than the sum.
Don’t mind me, I am babbling. But its ok because its raining. The rain understands and that’s just as fine as can be at the moment.
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